Language discrimination is an act of unfair treatment of an individual base on the characteristic of their speech, accent, size of vocabulary or syntax. The one usually experienced with this treatment are people who worked in the work force. Around 10 percent of people which had experience in nation origin discrimination which includes language every year. Throughout years of 1997 to 2011 there is rose of 76 percent of people in workplace complaint about these discrimination. About or more than 11,800 complaints were filed with U.S Equal Employment Opportunity commission. Since Language discrimination happen in workplace most of time. people who usually have a strong accent would not land on the job than the people who doesn't have accent. This also leads to unevenly distributed jobs between people who had efficiently speak English and people who does not. So as result, company most likely hire someone who speak English really well. It is another language discrimination since no one really know how interview can goes. Language discrimination is a crisis for many individual's mental health in society. A research study had been conducted in 2012 to developed perceived language discrimination from three sample of international students. The result of this study valid there is moderate relationship between language discrimination, depression and anxiety. The reason why it is because for anxiety correlation is 0.36 and for depression correlation r is 0.35. Both of correlation is positive which means language discrimination does lead to mental problems. As a result, Language discrimination can result illness in society where people can feel anxiety, sadness, depression and guilt. After, discrimination happened it can cause individual to be confuse or broken.
On the other hand, many people said that U.S does not allow language discrimination because employees have right to file complaints to government. But as matter of fact not all the employees have those opportunities. There are several reasons to this, but the number one reason is employees might be afraid of losing their job at the same time language proficiency had also become their stumbling block for filing complaints.
Personal:
Language discrimination directly affect me when I was a kid. I am not a native speaker, English is my second language. So sometime it's hard to communicate with people due to proficient and accent. one time I remember I have argument with someone in my class. The thing she said to me is maybe you should go back to your homeland since you can't speak English that well. That sentence really hurt me. After that time, every time before I talk to anyone I have to think beforehand. This cause me a lot of stress. Therefore, I personally felt really offended by language discrimination and that's how language discrimination related to me. The reason why I chose to write on this social issue not only because of my childhood memory but moreover I want to bring up people's alerts that we should respect one or another even if we do not come from the same country or speak the same language. America is a country which is made up multicultural diversity. The only way to get our act together is respect other and be open minded. Therefore, we should pay attention to language discrimination or any discrimination issue in our society because one of these reasons may be the one which tear us apart as a nation.
Community Member:
Reference:
Charge Statistics (Charges filed with EEOC) FY 1997 Through FY 2016. (n.d.). Retrieved November 02, 2017, from https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges.cfm
Wei, M., Wang, K., Ku, T., & Zárate, Michael A. (2012). A Development and Validation of the Perceived Language Discrimination Scale. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 18(4), 340-351.
Foy, P. (2012, December 31). Feds say workplace discrimination complaints rising over language ability, foreign accents. Retrieved November 02, 2017, from https://www.deseretnews.com/article/765619039/Feds-say-workplace-discrimination-complaints-rising-over-language-ability-foreign-accents.html
Midwest New Media, LLC - http://www.midwestnewmedia.com - (513) 742-9150. (n.d.). Workplace Fairness. Retrieved November 02, 2017, from https://www.workplacefairness.org/language-discrimination
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